


Mary's Angels

by FrancesHouseman



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, John-centric, M/M, Pre-Series, Stanford Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 10:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5964399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrancesHouseman/pseuds/FrancesHouseman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's one more silver bullet in the chamber; one last shot at the sikutor, the ice siren that has Dean in thrall. John takes aim, and misses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary's Angels

 

“Dean!” Fear makes John's voice sergeant major sharp. “Stop right there!”

 

Dean doesn't even glance at his father and it sends dread lacing through John's veins. His insides sink and his legs go heavy with it.

 

There's one more silver bullet in the chamber; one last shot at the sikutor, the ice siren that has Dean in thrall. John takes aim, and misses. It had been a literal long shot, one hundred yards too far for a real chance, but he stares at his gun, can't quite comprehend that he's missed, and panic gnaws at his control. “Dean, listen to me!” John hollers, his voice the only tool left him.

 

Dean keeps walking, fixated on the thing that looks like Sam.

 

“It's the siren! It's not Sam!” John gathers every ounce of authority he can muster. “ _DEAN WINCHESTER, YOU WILL FUCKING LISTEN TO ME!_ ”

 

The sikutor starts to glide towards Dean, Sam's head tilted in sympathy. Its palms are held out, as though to take Dean's hands, and for a moment John hates them, the monster and his youngest son both, for conspiring to destroy Dean between them.

 

“Dean!” John's fists clench in frustration. He needs to go after Dean but two of them would break the ice for sure; he needs to hit something. “Dean!”

 

One moment Dean's there and the next moment he's gone, midstep, a hole in the ice where he'd been.

 

John runs. Everything in his training urges caution, _four inches of ice for walking,_ but he can't force himself to crawl until he's perilously close, and it's nothing short of a miracle that the ice holds as he commando crawls to the edge. The second miracle is Dean's head breaking the surface, eyes wild and gasping, _b_ _reathing, alive._ John sends up thanks to Mary, not to the Blessed Virgin but to his own beloved guardian. 

 

“Steady your breathing, son,” John orders, “Get your pulse rate down. Don't hyperventilate.”

 

Dean's listening now, and John sees him trying, ghost pale and drenched. Dean nods to show that he's better, ready to be pulled out, wide-eyed and trusting. John's fingers clamp onto Dean's forearms, tight as he's ever held on to anything in his life.

 

“Lie flat,” John says, although Dean already knows this, fucking _should_ know it. “Kick your legs while I pull.”

 

The ice groans and Dean's kicking is weak at best but they drag him out. The temptation is to rest for a moment, but they're not out of the woods yet; still have to worry about hypothermia and the sikutor.

 

“Roll!” John commands, leading by example, relief washing through him as Dean follows. They roll away like toppled ninepins until the ice is thick enough, and then jog for the treeline that marks the shore. They're going to be alright, John thinks. Another near-miss but he can do this now, back on solid ground.

 

The creature that looks like Sammy lingers on the far side of the lake. John helps Dean to strip, his wet underwear too, despite Dean's feeble protests. Dean doesn't look at the creature. John sends a silent promise of death that carries loud and clear across the ice, and the sikutor melts away into the trees.

 

“Now roll in the snow,” John says, pointing at the ground.

 

Dean trembles, all over goose flesh and soaked to the bone. His eyes slide to the fresh bank of snow and then back to John's, begging for mercy.

 

“Now, Dean, do it. Roll. The snow is fresh, it'll dry you.”

 

Dean crosses his arms over his chest, shuts his eyes tight and does as he's told. He makes a pained sound, half sob, half wail as he goes down and John feels bad for the kid but he needs to be dry fast, and this is the fastest way John knows.

 

“Good,” John praises and Dean staggers to his feet, “Doing real good son, c'mon.”

 

John takes off his ski jacket and gets it wrapped around Dean, drawing the hood tight around Dean's face. He kicks off his boots and starts on the button of his pants.

 

“Dad, no. C'mon,” Dean says.

 

John ignores him and his heart warms when Dean's lips quirk into something like his trademark smirk, apparently never too cold to laugh at his old man wearing long-johns. John's internal defcon alert notches down again from four to three.

 

“Put them on,” John says, handing his combat pants to Dean, “Before they lose my body heat. Where's _your_ thermal underwear anyway? Long-johns not sexy enough for Dean Winchester?”

 

Dean doesn't respond beyond a snort. He pulls the trousers on, movements painfully slow, damp limbs sticking to the fabric.

 

“The boots too,” John says.

 

“What're you gonna wear?”

 

“I'm not the one about to die of hypothermia,” John says gruffly, casting around for fuel. His eyes settle on a pile of fishing crates rising up out of the snow. They smash to pieces very satisfactorily when he bashes them against the trunk of a tree.

 

“Dude,” Dean says through chattering teeth, “What did they ever do to you.”

 

“Jumping jacks,” John says. “Two hundred. Start now.”

 

Dean groans but when he's got the boots laced he starts jumping, John's pants ride down ridiculously low on his hips, smooth pale skin and a few dark curls appearing between jacket and trousers every time Dean's arms go up.

 

There are strands of dead grass poking out of the snow. John gathers as much as he can and tears off armfuls of tree bark for kindling. He uses one of the larger planks to clear a patch of snow for a fire. “Give me your arm,” he says to Dean.

 

Dean holds still while John cuts a hole in the sleeve of his ski jacket and pulls out some of the stuffing, rolling it into a ball.

 

“My lighter,” John says, a hand held out for his favourite Zippo.

 

“Uh...” Dean glances at his sodden heap of clothes, and John remembers that Dean had the lighter before, which means that it's now either soaking wet or lying at the bottom of the lake.

 

“Goddamnit Dean. In my wallet then. The fire steel. Left inside pocket.”

 

The fire steel is US Marine issue, something that John had earned and never returned. It works just as good as the first day he got it, spark catching the little ball of stuffing first time. John wraps dried grass around it, turning it gently in his hands.

 

“Push-ups, burpees,” John says, because Dean's just standing there, “Keep moving for fuck's sake.”

 

Dean rolls his eyes, still pale as hell, but gets down to his hands and toes.

 

John blows delicately at the smoking bundle, his own toes numbing with the cold. He coaxes a flame and sets it under the tree bark and crate wood, adding more bark until he's sure the fire has taken. Dean's still moving, hands to feet, jumping, and down to hands and knees again. “Get over here,” John says. He's proud of Dean for keeping going and his is voice gruff with it.

 

They sit on a crate each, and John uses another crate to drape Dean's wet clothes, close enough to the fire to smoke and steam but not close enough to burn. He drags over a few more crates for firewood before allowing himself to rest and warm his feet.

 

The fire banks quickly and the heat is delicious. “Oh man, that's good.” Dean says, taking the words right out of John's mouth.

 

John grunts. Dean may seem better but John's not fooled, not anymore. He'd known that Dean was having trouble, that he's been missing Sam worse than a ghost ship misses her crew, but as usual John has underestimated the problem. He's always underestimating his boys. “What the fuck was that?” he asks, and it comes out harsher than he intended.

 

Dean stares at the fire. The kid is barely holding it together, and John can see it now but it's taken a near-death disaster for it to catch up to him.

 

“You know the lore as well as I do,” John says. “Sirens don't get to you like that unless you ingest the venom. Is there something I'm missing here?”

 

Dean is stubbornly silent, his cheeks turning slowly red. It should be shame but could as easily be the fire doing its job. Either way it's a good sign.

 

This whole fucking mess is John's fault. All Dean ever did was try to keep the peace, try to make the life good enough for his brother, damn near killing himself bending over backwards to make them all happy. John has had time to regret the things he said to Sam, alone out there in California and probably believing that his family hates him. Dean might have stayed by John's side, loyal to the death, but Dean is chasing that death now, John realises. Dean is heartsick and broken.

 

“I thought it was Sam,” Dean says, quietly because it's a lie and they both know it.

 

Dean has been keeping tabs on Sam in California and John knows this because he has been keeping tabs on them both. Honestly, he's been amazed to see how well Sam's getting on, grades off the charts and working part time to earn his keep. John had half expected Sam to be back within the month, back for Dean, and John had been prepared to... not apologise precisely, but soothe and negotiate. He doesn't know whether to be disappointed or proud in his youngest.

 

John's mind wanders to Mary, as it often does without his permission. Would a mother miss her child so badly when they left home? _No_ , says a treacherous voice in the back of his mind, _Because Sam and Dean are even closer than that_. The way Dean misses Sam is more like the way John had missed Mary after the fire. It would terrify John if he let himself think about it properly.

 

“Was there a girl at the bar last night?” John says, giving Dean the out they both desperately need. “Or something in your drink? Maybe it knew we were here.”

 

Dean looks up, gratitude and shame, definitely shame, in his expression, but he says, “Yeah,” and tries on his cocky playboy smile for John's sake, “There was... this redhead, and, y'know.” He shrugs, trying so hard, and John appreciates it, he really does.

 

“Alright, well. We'll be better prepared next time. These ice sirens are trickier than the regular kind it seems.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

John scans the trees but there's no sign of the sikutor. The fire crackles and pops and he stands to add more wood, wincing when his warmed feet encounter fresh snow.

 

“Here,” Dean says, unlacing the boots, “S'not like I need them now.”

 

Dean's clothes are not quite dry on one side. John turns them. They've got another hour before sunset, give or take, and John wants out of these woods before dark.

 

Dean's hair is damp and squashed flat when he pushes the hood of the ski jacket back. It's like he used to look as a kid, fresh out of the bath, and John can't help but smile at him.

 

“What?” Dean scowls and scrubs at his hair. It stands up in spikes and makes Dean look like a disgruntled hedgehog. John rubs a hand over his scruff to hide his grin. Dean had been such a cute kid, the apple of Mary's eye. In Dean's early years John's existence had been a roller coaster of extremes: at once the proudest, luckiest man alive, and also gut wrenchingly terrified that he was going to fuck it all up.

 

“You wouldn't keep your hat on when I took you walking in your stroller,” John says. “You kept throwing it on the floor, and screamed blue murder when I kept putting it back on. And it was a really cold winter. You'd have been two.”

 

“Huh,” Dean says, but the fact that he doesn't shut John down with a smart-ass remark is as good as permission for John to go on.

 

“You got really mad. And I was stuck between a rock and a hard place because if your mother saw that you weren't wearing it she'd have kicked my ass six ways from Sunday.”

 

Dean rolls his eyes when John doesn't continue. “So? What did you do?” he says, feigning exasperation, like he's not dying to hear it.

 

John smiles. “I let you keep it off until we were just around the corner from the house, then I was gonna suck it up and _make_ you to wear it but you'd fallen asleep anyway. So I put it on you and Mary never knew. You'd have worn it for her though, no problem.” _Because you loved her in your two year old way, almost as much as she loved you, and you let her know it every day_ , John doesn't add. His chest aches with a feeling that used to mean tears, but the tears don't come anymore unless he's stinking drunk. He turns away.

 

Dean looks back to the fire and for a while they share the silence.

 

John's thoughts take him back nine months to his sons, asleep together in a tangle of limbs. They'd been clothed though, so it had been weird but not _that_ weird, and that's as far as John lets himself dwell on it. It's as far as he'd let himself think on it at the time, before slipping back outside to get shit-faced drunk. He stands and throws the last pieces of crate onto the fire.

 

“So what are we going to do about the sikutor?” Dean asks, but it's more about the ritual of making things normal between them than genuine curiosity.

 

“Keep watch, I guess. It's a small town so it should be obvious when it's found a new victim. It'll be easier to kill when it's busy with someone else. Catch.”

 

Dean catches the fire steel and takes out John's wallet to put it away. “What's this?” He holds up a small silver medallion for inspection.

 

“St Michael,” John says. “I've been carrying that around since before you were born. Got it in the Marines; guardian of soldiers. He's an archangel, you know the lore. I never really believed in it but your mother sure did.”

 

“How come I've never seen it before?”

 

“I guess you haven't been snooping in my wallet. Can't say that's a bad thing,” John pauses in his destruction of the final crate, even more satisfying with his boot. “You keep it,” he says, and doesn't know why he didn't think of it before. “Maybe your mother was right, who knows?” She wasn't, and John feels the hollowness of it every day, but maybe Dean can still believe.

 

“Thanks,” Dean says softly, closing his hand around it. And if only St Michael could mend broken hearts. “I'll get one for Sam.”

 

John kicks the broken pieces of wood particularly hard. “Yeah? Which saint is his do you think?”

 

“An angel,” Dean muses, “One of the powerful ones; an archangel.”

 

Mary and her goddamn angels. Where had God been when John's beloved wife had been burning to death on the ceiling of Sammy's nursery? John keeps his voice level for Dean's sake though. Dean needs John's help right now and if talking about Sam is what he needs then talking about Sam is what they'll do. “Not Raphael, he's for healers. There's Uriel though,” John suggests, “He's the one for wisdom.”

 

“Yeah,” Dean says, warming to the idea, “Sam's smart.” He looks to John, earnestly, as though John still needs convincing of how smart Sam is. “I mean, he's doing well at Stanford Dad, I checked,” Dean looks down guiltily then up, defiant, “He's making really good grades, top of his class. All those kids who had tutors and shit through high school and Sam's the brightest.”

 

John's heart sinks. _Sam's the brightest_. It's an unfortunate choice of words. The brightest and most beautiful of the archangels had been cast out. And his name hadn't been Uriel. “Sam's real smart,” John agrees.

 

Dean keeps talking, telling John things about Sam that he already knows, now that Dean knows he won't get into trouble for knowing them himself: Sam's barista job, his geeky room mate, the classes Sam's taking for extra credit.

 

John thinks of the demon blood that poisoned Sam the night Mary died. He thinks about how his own stubbornness has driven a wedge between his sons, and how it might destroy them, Dean at least, if not Sam.

 

If John could allow himself to think honestly about his sons then he would realise that he himself had bound them tightly together. He would come to admit that their separation is cruel, worse than John's niggling worries of unnatural closeness. But John doesn't allow himself to consciously think this way, and so these truths manifest more generally as sorrow and regret. They settle in John's bones like old friends settling in to join them by the campfire.

 

When the light starts to fade they switch clothes again, the combat pants too because the last time John had been a thirty inch waist was way back in 1978, and there's no way he's squeezing into Dean's jeans.

 

“I stink like a bonfire,” Dean complains.

 

John nods sagely. “Yeah well,” he says, “I think maybe it's an improvement.”

 

It surprises a huff of laughter from Dean and John takes a snowball to the arm, which he ignores.

 

John will get them back to the room and then they'll get cleaned up. Dean is talking again, he's warm and dry, and, for the moment at least, not suicidal. John's counting it as a win.

 

****

 

The sikutor watches the two hunters walk back to the big black truck, well hidden in the dusky forest. It feels smug about its easy victory over the younger pretty one, and comfortable in the new tall, lean form it took from his mind. It listens to their conversation about getting back to the motel and the quibble over who gets to drive.

 

When the younger one opens the passenger door complaining about his wet boots, the sikutor is surprised by how quickly he turns and throws the knife. It thunks into the sikutor's shoulder and pain blossoms from the wound as silver spreads though the creature's bloodstream like hell fire. It tries to turn and run but the older hunter had needed only a moment to re-load, and there isn't even time to turn.

 

The older hunter's eyes are cold, a promise of death delivered, but the last thing the creature sees through its borrowed bangs as it sinks to the reddening snow are the eyes of the younger hunter, watery and beautiful in their private anguish.

 


End file.
